Mariam Durrani

It seems the UA will be going through more reconstructive surgery in the future, and I'm not sure if it's for the better.

The face of this campus has been dramatically altered since I was a freshman, and after reading the Sept. 10 piece titled, "Likins: Time to redefine UA identity," it seems very likely that we might not even recognize the school in another four years.

In the article, the impending budget cuts have compelled the three presidents from NAU, ASU and UA to reevaluate what is important to each campus. NAU is on its way to becoming a cozy liberal arts college in the mountains and ASU is expanding rapidly into one of the ten largest universities in the United States.

So where does that leave us?

UA had to cut the Arizona International College last year because of budget cuts. And quite honestly, I didn't think too much of it until this year. Some of the freshmen I talked to were surprised by the closing because they planned to apply into programs of AIC and were told they couldn't anymore.

The more I debated the topic, it seemed to me that change was inevitably heading our way, but not all of these changes were for the better. And the ambiguousness of the Sept. 10 article really doesn't define for the student body what's next and how we get involved in the decision-making process.

Some of the ideas mentioned in the article are to eliminate provisional admissions to in-state students with a 2.5 GPA. Likins says he would like to see UA become more selective, so it can manage the growth and academic programming of the university.

When it comes to eliminating programs in the future, like AIC, President Peter Likins doesn't want to pressurize the deans any further on what should be cut just yet; but that seems to imply that in the future we can expect some more programs to be cut from the UA campus.

None of these changes have been set in stone just yet and Likins wants student input on the subject.

Well, Mr. Likins, raising the standards to get into the UA would only help our community become more education oriented, which we sometimes seem to forget. Some undergraduate students don't understand the importance of why we are really here and busy themselves with other extracurricular activities, which may be more fun than class but not more important.

If we place more emphasis on GPA standards from freshmen year and throughout, I think it would encourage classroom participation and education instead of those classes where the teacher asks questions and answers them himself because the class is too apathetic to respond.

Also, the question of diversifying the student, faculty and staff members seemed a little obscure in the article, so let me tell you what I thought it meant on one level.

If by diversifying faculty, you mean actually having teachers who know what they are talking about and be updated on their respective subjects ÷ great! Now I know some of you are going to hate me for saying this, but we have some teachers at this university who haven't changed their exams in the last ten years. Yup. Every year for every class, they assign the same homework and give the exact same exams.

I ask you, if the students get wind of this complete lack of interest in what undergraduate students are actually learning because the professor is so busy with research requirements and faces termination, what do you think happens? As you can imagine, students cheat and gain nothing from the class while the professor pats himself on the back because everyone is just doing so remarkably well.

So when it comes to the subject of making this university more research-oriented, please remember that professors are also human. When you ask them to focus on research, you also require them to spend time really teaching their undergraduate courses.

This way, not only will the school get the most our of their money ÷ we students will get the most out of our money as well.